the girl with all of the choices

o n e h u n d r e d f o u r t e e n

2674 words

march eleventh- a light in the darkness

~ Addison ~

Edward Remus Lupin, conveniently nicknamed Teddy, was born on a beautiful sunny day in March. He was born at 9:32 in the morning and was now sleeping contentedly in his mother's arms, his doting father and grandmother watching him with pride.

The morning had been very hectic. Rather, the last 24 hours had been hectic. 

Tonks had woken up the day before, the morning of the tenth, with what her mother assumed were contractions. They weren't frequent whatsoever and were rather random, to be honest. Tonks wasn't as convinced as Andromeda was, though. 

She said that they had stopped halfway through the day, explaining them as false alarms. If Mum was here, she would have called them Braxton Hicks. One of her best girlfriends was pregnant when I was about ten, and she and I were always over at her house to help out while she was pregnant. 

We went about our day, as usual, only paying extra attention to the impending mother in the cottage. Remus and I made the meals, cooking exactly what Tonks wanted. She apparently had regained her appetite following the false alarm. 

When nighttime came, Andromeda and I spent some time together, discussing what she had brought up on the ninth after Remus had gone to bed. But just as soon as we had settled into our beds following our training session, we were startled again.

The contractions that Tonks had been having earlier on the tenth were not fake. 

She had laboured through the night into the morning, so we were up with her the entire time. It was my job to fetch ice chips and do what I could to help soothe her, also taking time to prepare the nursery so that when her baby was born, they would have the perfect place to keep to themself. 

While Remus had been the Healer of the household, Andromeda was the one who made sure everything was okay. Impending fatherhood had made Remus more of a mess than I had ever seen him; he was flustered and snippy and very much did not fill the role of the calm man of the house, which he had fallen into after Ted's death. He was, to be frank, all over the place. 

Part of me felt bad for Tonks. If I was the one giving birth, there would be no way that I would allow my mother to play the role of obstetrician. 

But, she got through it, with a few hiccups of course.

"Dora, darling, you need to calm down," Andromeda chided as gently as possible, inspecting the diagnostic spell that fluttered above her daughter as she writhed.

"I can't do this," Tonks cried, clutching her pillow for dear life as she sobbed. "I can't have this baby."

"Dora," Remus cooed, crouching down so that he was on her level as she laid on the bed. "If you don't calm down, the baby is going to get hurt."

She continued to sob, her breathing erratic and spluttering randomly. "I can't have this baby. I can't have this baby without a name. They don't have a name yet. They can't not have a name."

"They'll have a name when you see them, sweetheart," Andromeda reassured her, stroking her hair as she continued to examine the diagnostic. "But you need to breathe or else the baby isn't going to make it."

"I can't-" she quavered "I can't have this baby- I can't name him without Dad- He was- He was supposed to help me with the name- I can't have this- I can't do this-"